Christmas 1354, and in Cambridge the winter is as bad as anyone can remember. But however cold the weather gets, for two individuals it is about to get colder.

A drunkan attempt at blackmail by Norbert Tulyet, errant scholar of the Franciscan Hostal of Ovyng, leaves him dead at the hostel door. And in St Michael's church, a second unidentified body holds an even greater mystery.

For Matthew Bartholomew, the murders would be difficult to solve at any normal time of the year, but now he has a further serious distraction to deal with. Philippa Abigny, to whom he was once betrothed, has returned to Cambridge with the man she left him for, the merchant Sir Walter Turke.

Bartholomew hopes that the couple's stay will be brief, but he is about to be sorely disappointed. For not only does the mysterious body in the church trun out to be Walter's servent, but events conspire to ensure that Walter will never leave Cambridge again...